


A Choice to Be Made

by ravensinflight



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: AU, F/M, Rumbelle Secret Santa 2015
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 23:32:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5474585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravensinflight/pseuds/ravensinflight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Imp always chooses a maiden of the valley as his price.</p><p>Rumbelle Secret Santa gift for Endangered_slug. The prompt was: you've been granted three wishes. An AU of the novel “Uprooted” by Naomi Novik. If you haven't read the book, this story is an FTL!AU. Also you should read “Uprooted,” because it's amazing and gorgeous and this is nowhere close to it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Choice to Be Made

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Endangered_Slug](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Endangered_Slug/gifts).



> This is my gift for the awesome endangeredslug!! It was a terrific prompt, and I had even more planned for it, but life got a bit in the way. Any mistakes are my own and are shameful.

There was a twist in the air.  
Belle didn’t know how else to describe it--the tang, the breeze, the pressing weight of water, or maybe heat. It was all of these things, swirled together into something more. Something . . . dangerous.  
There were leaves in Belle’s hair. She could feel them, as well as sticky sap along the sides of her blue dress where her palms would lie, and dirt of assorted colors spackled up her legs and hem. None of that normally bothered her, but today was a Choosing day, so everything was bothering her.  
She moved with sure feet through the Forest. When she was younger, she would trip on rocks and roots with a frequency her mother and father found terrifying and exasperating. She was never seriously injured, and after so many years of adventures the smell of the soil and the light through the leaves were enough to guide her home safely, and her parents knew this. Her mother had known, known in the bone-deep way mothers seemed to know some things about their children, and consequently worried less than her father did. He worried for two now, ever since her mother had been killed by creatures from the Forest. Belle didn’t even know for sure what it was that had taken her; there were just too many options, and too many who fell victim to them every year.  
Hence the Choosing. The Imp would come down from his Castle, and select a price from the villages for his protection against the Forest. Legend had it that in centuries past he’d bargained for the usual things a lord might take, such as cattle and gold. For as long as anyone living could remember, or their parent’s parents for that matter, he had always taken a girl as his price. A new maid, once every decade or so, picked out from all the girls of the right age of all the villages in the valley. She’d disappear, like a wisp of fog from atop the fields as the sun rose, up to the wizard’s castle in the mountains. They never came back, not really--he let them go, but he changed them first.  
Belle was not afraid of the Choosing, she was indignant about it. It was a Choosing year, they’d been informed, and everyone had immediately been thrown into a tizzy, especially the women of the correct age--28--and their families. This included Belle and her father, although Belle was not concerned over the possibility of being chosen. She had none of the grace and something Belle can only equate with “stature” that past Chosen had possessed. She was considered quite beautiful, she was aware, but that statement was never complete at that point. It was always “Oh Belle, she’s so lovely, but . . .” or “What a pretty girl, it’s such a shame . . .” Shame her mother died before curbing her tongue or her wandering feet. So lovely but for the constant smear of something on her face and clothes, either from accident or preoccupation with her thoughts and books. Truly a beauty, but a funny girl.  
No, Belle wasn’t afraid of the Choosing for herself. If she’s afraid for anyone, it’s for the sister of her heart, Emma. Emma was exactly the sort of young woman the Imp would take: striking in face and manner, strong and noted in the community. The terms used to describe her were compliments with smoldering edges; firebrand, spitfire, incandescent. Belle loved her as the sister she never had, as the friend and confidant who believed in her abilities and interests when no one else could be bothered, and the thought of Emma being taken from them was causing a hard lump to form in the bottom of her belly.  
Is it worth it? Belle thought, breathing deeply of fresh green air from between stately tree trunks before she would be exposed out in the field where they would await the wizard. Is his protection worth our loss?  
She sighed, the path smoothing out into a more well-traversed portion, signalling she was close to leaving the Forest.  
In her heart, she knew the answer.

******

They stood around awkwardly, waiting on the Imp’s pleasure. Sometimes, they attempted to make this event celebratory, or at the very least, ceremonial, but it was hard to plan these things with so little detail as to the who and when. Who’s sacrifice would they celebrate? How to make a ceremony out of hundreds of milling villagers?  
Belle and Emma observed it all from the center. They stood near a table with water and food, which all the potential Chosen ate from nervously, like birds who sense a cat nearby. Emma, dressed in bridal white with with a flower crown in her perfect ringlets of blonde hair, scowled.  
“Maybe the Imp won’t want you with a face like a creased potato,” Belle said to her quietly. Emma snorted and looked down at Belle. She barely came up to the other woman’s shoulder. She was used to it.  
“If that’s true, I’m not the only one who’s safe,” Emma commented, gesturing to the gathered women.  
“That’s mean,” Belle chided her friend.  
Emma gave her a look. “You started it.”  
“That’s because you can take it.”  
“Yes I can,” Emma said, and her tone blew away what amusement Belle had from the conversation in a cold breeze.  
Emma’s family had known, almost since she was born, that she was going to be Chosen. Besides the timing being right for it, Emma was . . . Emma. A golden child become a lioness of a woman--she was destined to be a hero. She would save them all from the Forest with her strength and beauty, the call of destiny whispering her name louder and louder as the days had passed. And now the day was here.  
The anger in Belle was something slippery and hot that she could grab onto for a short time, and then escaped her to be replaced by indignation, disappointment, and worry. For Emma, herself, her father, her people, her Forest.  
The Imp appeared out of nowhere. Again, there were stories that he could arrive in a driverless carriage, or a puff of smoke, but Belle had always just seen him appear. One second, empty air, the next, glittering wizard.  
He was draped in muted gold, deep reds, browned leather. There was patterns and scrollwork across much of his person, the glint of shiny gold on his fingers and along the edges of his clothing, the glint of silver from his hair. He was both too much and yet somehow hidden all at once. It was like he dressed to hide in shadows, but once you noticed him, he was the most fascinating thing you could see.  
He gestured broadly, and a hush fell over the crowd. Not magic, just dread.  
“Let’s get on with this,” he said perfunctorily. He strode forward and the whole of the party stepped backward--checked for the most part, but still like the collective intaking of a breath. The Imp gave the barest of pauses, and continued toward the awaiting women.  
Emma stood tall, taller even than she had before. She towered over the Imp. It should have made him seem ridiculous, or weaker at least. It didn’t.  
He walked right up to her, and Belle’s heart leapt into her throat. As we always suspected, she thought faintly. He will take my dearest friend.  
The Imp gave a cursory glance down the line, although his selection seemed a foregone conclusion as he stood right before Emma and Belle. He glanced left, then right, with a slight movement of the head. He looked back to them, and scowled.  
Belle felt the first pang of real fear. Oh gods, what had they done? She wondered frantically. Emma gave the slightest of twitches, and Belle realized she had grasped the taller woman’s hand in her own in reflex to the wizard’s appraisal. Belle’s fear flickered against her anger, back and forth in the space of a breath.  
No, she thought. I won’t let go. I don’t care what you think!  
The Imp still frowned at them, the women standing closest on either side carefully edged away to distance themselves from his stare. Belle glared back. I wish you’d just leave her alone! She fought to make sure her face showed nothing other than steely resolve.  
“Her,” the Imp said at last, and it was Belle’s turn to twitch. Because he wasn’t pointing at Emma, he wasn’t taking the sister of her heart she always feared would be taken from her as abruptly as the Forest took her mother. He was pointing at Belle.  
“My price is her.”

******

The Imp’s tower was high in the mountains. It could see over the whole of the Forest, and could be seen in turn. Belle assumed that was intentional. The people of the valley, the scattered villages that grew thicker as they approached the sea, and the castles of various monarchs who resided there, watched the tower and were watched by it in turn. They never approached, Belle had heard; there was no reason to do so. If they needed help, the Imp came to them.  
The occasional maiden left the tower, of course, once their time with the Imp came to an end. These women might stop by the village of their origin, but they never stayed. It was said that they had enough gold to buy themselves whatever they might wish: a house, land, even a respectable husband despite their . . . service. Goods and luxuries aplenty. But they never stayed. Something about them was too different; they were plants that had outgrown their potting, and they could not fit back into their old lives, even if they had been unconditionally welcomed.  
Belle wasn’t sure if her father would have welcomed her back in such a manner, though she knew without a doubt that he was devastated by her being Chosen and would be glad of her return. She was relatively certain.  
“Main hall,” the wizard in front of her said, striding through yet another lavish room of the tower. Belle wasn’t certain what made it more “main” than some of the other extravagant rooms she’d seen, but she knew she would have plenty of time to find out.  
They went up another level, down a short hallway and then--”Your room,” he said, in the same bored tones.  
Belle was weakly surprised. Somehow she thought--well, she wasn’t entirely sure what she thought. That I would sleep in cinder and ash by the fireplace of the kitchen? That he would keep me like a pet at the foot of his bed? She internally quailed, but then pushed open the door.  
It was bare compared to the rooms she’d been shown thus far (including the kitchen,) but still opulent compared to any room she could find in her small village. Smooth, dark wood floors that appeared almost seamless with age, the grey stone of the tower walls laced with three windows taller than she was that afforded a complete view of the western side of the Forest and mountains that surrounded them. She even had a clear view down the road that passed the tower in either direction, back toward the valley villages and away to the seaside castles. A bed, a fireplace, a wardrobe-- there was nothing missing from its furnishings or comforts, but it was still somehow, intrinsically empty. Belle wondered if he kept every woman here over the years, then squashed the thought. The room would serve.  
She told the wizard as much and he gave a languid gesture of his hand that conveyed acceptance of her acceptance and total disregard for it at the same time.  
“Fine, fine,” he muttered, and for the first time she heard an emotion in his voice, one that matched the aggrieved expression on his face at the Choosing. Like she’d upset his life in some way.  
“What--what are my duties?” Her own spark of aggravation gave her the strength to speak.  
His posture went back to being stiff, his expression closed. He ticked items off on his fingers. “Clean, cook, fetch, serve, and-” a slight pause for emphasis that caught Belle’s heart, “stay out of my way.”  
With that, he left her to her empty room. Belle drifted to the high windows, their view of glorious green trees and golden meadows bounded by purple mountains delicately cut into bite-sized pieces by diamond paned glass of the clearest quality she had ever seen. It was lovely.  
For the first time in a very long time, she let herself cry.

*****

Considering the sheer size of her new home, staying out of the wizard’s way proved more difficult to do than Belle thought. The man was everywhere, underfoot in the kitchen, the library, the main rooms--the only room Belle never unexpectedly encountered him was her own room. Or his private chambers at the top of the tower--mostly because he never let her in them. The closest she got was the workroom he kept one level below that; and even then, she didn’t think he had ever intended to let her in that far.  
“What are you doing?”  
Belle sighed. Her arms were extended fully over her head, but she came nowhere close to reaching the upper part of the windows she was attempting to scrub. She bit back an immediate response. What does it look like I’m doing? She had become more comfortable in the wizard’s presence, but still maintained cautious limits.  
“I’m clearing the glass of . . . whatever residue this is to let in the Spring light,” she said. “You need to let in some light.”  
“No you’re not,” he said simply, and she sighed despite her best intentions. He had this way of stating things about her as truths, taking for granted he knew her mind and motives better than she did. When she’d first arrived, her nerves still raw and rabbit quick, he’d startled her greatly in the kitchen. She’d been preparing an evening meal from a large leather tome, a helpful gift left behind from some other Chosen girl she assumed, and had become completely engrossed by the description of the holdings in the wizard’s garden. Apparently, he had a multitude of useful and unusual things, some edible, some magical, many poisonous. A previous woman who had lived where she now lived had made a great study of them, writing down the various names for commonly known ones, creating descriptions and giving her own labels to the ones she did not know. She’d been a deft hand with a pencil and ink, and her drawings were so intricate Belle felt sure if she were to head outside, she’d know instantly which plant was which.  
She was contemplating a beautiful rendering of a rose, when a voice spoke just behind her that caused her to leap out of her chair.  
“You don’t like to cook,” the Imp said, layered in all his leather and glory. There was no accusation in his voice, or even annoyance. She found him hypnotic for the most part, a still quiet creature with piercing eyes the color of dark tea. He moved with efficiency, and his face . . . it was not an unpleasant face. She felt it could likely express far more than he chose to, it was a face with character that he held in check for the most part. She caught him smirking to himself now and again, usually at his own work. She saw him frown a great deal more, usually at her work. But it was never harsh, he raised neither hand nor voice to her. If she bungled something beyond saving (usually dinner) he simply waved it away with a casual display of magic and said, “Do it again.”  
He stared at her in the kitchen with the face she saw the most: inscrutable. A mask upon a mask she wasn’t quite able to read beneath. Yet.  
“I-what-I’m cooking now,” Belle responded startled.  
“No,” he said, “you’re reading. And I didn’t say you weren’t cooking, I said you didn’t like to cook.” He folded his hands together in front of himself, daring her to contradict his statement.  
Belle had to admit, he was right. There was nothing wrong with cooking, and she could do it (she could do some of it,) but she’d prefer many other tasks before culinary ones.  
Be glad that’s the task he asks of you a continuously suspicious part of her mind whispered.  
She crossed her arms defensively in front of her chest. “Fine. I don’t. But it is one of my tasks, and I will not shirk my duties.”  
This got a mild reaction out of him. The lifting of the brow, a gracious sweep of his hand. “Cook or don’t, dearie. I’d rather that than continuing to eat charcoal.” He pressed his hand to his chest. “I’m an imp, not a dragon.”  
She resisted the urge to smirk at his quip, since he was smirking enough for them both.  
“It’s one of my duties,” she protested half-heartedly.  
“The castle will make the food,” he said, “if you want to do something useful, do something useful. Just not cooking.”  
She bristled a bit, but subsided at the growing realization that he was effectively telling her to do what she wanted, as long as it had utility.  
“Can I go outside?” She asked cautiously. “At least, on the grounds of the Tower?”  
A careful look from him in return. “As long as you are useful,” he said firmly. With a spin, he left her gaping in the kitchen, and she roused herself in time to remove her dish from the oven unscathed.  
After that, she stopped cooking, for the most part. She made herself breakfast most days, a meal the wizard didn’t seem to partake in, and she often made up a plate of food to accompany the afternoon tea she fetched for them both. The castle made the cookies and sandwiches, but she fetched and served.  
By the end of her second month, fetching and serving were about the only two things from his original list Belle still did. She did not cook, she mostly did not clean, and she definitely didn’t stay out of his way. That last of unintentional, but undeniable. She justified most of it with the rationale that she was, despite her change in duties, still quite useful.  
The cleaning of the windows was an effort to adhere to the letter of his original proclamation, if not the spirit.  
“I am too cleaning,” she said with certainty this time. Sleeves pushed up, an apron over her dress, she was covered in dust and grime and definitely cleaning damn the man!  
He stood up from his table, walking towards her with the confidence of a wolf stalking through the woods. Belle cocked her head at him, considering. He is trying not to be frightening, she realized in that moment. All his deliberate, restrained movements, perhaps even the expressions on his face. She nearly laughed, thinking of how his attempts only make him seem scarier, less human.  
He drew up beside her, one hand folded behind his back, the other casually waving to the shelf adjacent to the window.  
“You are not cleaning,” he said again. “You are looking at my books. You just happen to be scrubbing a window at the same time.”  
Belle’s jaw dropped in disbelief. She caught herself after a moment and snapped it shut. “How-how could you possibly know that?” She placed her hands on her hips and stared at him accusingly.  
He scoffed. “It’s not hard, dearie, your head pivots like a weather vane every few minutes.” He pointed at her. “You are eyeing my books like a bird with a worm.”  
It was on the tip of her tongue. She itched to say it. Every few minutes? How much are you working-and how much are you watching me? But she doesn’t.  
Instead, she lowers her arms from her sides and concedes defeat with a slight nod. She awaits his scolding, or an order to get back to work. She gets neither.  
“So?” He demand. The Imp frowns at her in confusion, maybe even aggravation.  
“So what?” Belle asks back, confused.  
“So-” he’s drawn the sound out mockingly-”why don’t you just read them?”  
Belle was stunned.  
“I-I can’t,” she managed to stutter out.  
He looks alarmed. “You can’t read?” His tone is shocked.  
“No,” she said vehemently. She checked herself, again, trying for calm and respect when speaking to her lord. “I can read,” she explained. “But I shouldn’t.”  
He is all befuddlement. “Why not?” He has a moment of realization. “Did you fear to seek my permission, because this is a very circuitous way of attempting to be granted-”  
“No no no, I would never ask that,” Belle assured him.  
The wizard has reached some sort of breaking point. He shifts his weight, almost anxiously, and pushes some of his hair back behind one ear. It is fine, she’s noticed, colored like the feathers of a sparrow and seemingly as soft.  
“Please explain.” His arms crossed in front of himself of their own accord, an unconscious protest to his near fidgeting.  
“I will not be useful if I read,” Belle tells him patiently. “So I do not ask if I can read.” The blankness of his face prompts her to continue. “A reading woman does not get much done. In my case, it would be doubly so,” she admits this somewhat ruefully. “I have always become too lost in my reading, in studying of things that don’t-don’t really matter, I suppose.” She shrugged away memories, of being rousted from her room and encouraged to help out in the kitchen or the yard. Or forcefully pulled from her reading to play with others, or adventure with Emma. She didn’t mind any of these things, and while she loved her wandering in the Forest and her time with beloved family and friends, she yearned for time with her books just as strongly. No one in her village seemed to have quite the same weakness for the written word. Books were scarce as well, and the wizard’s collection was breathtaking compared to what Belle had seen before.  
The wizard in question has leaned back slightly, absorbing her words. Belle’s eyes flick from his to the books. I wish I could read you, she tells them silently. She is disappointed, yes, but it is not the first time, nor likely to be the last.  
She’s startled by the deep sigh that comes from the wizard, turning her full attention back to him as his head bows forward in a posture of defeat, his fine-spun hair cascading around the planes of his face. He straightens again almost immediately, smirk firmly in place.  
“Have at them,” he gestured with an artfully lazy hand. “Just don’t spill tea on anything.” He turned back to the work table before Belle could muster a response. He paused, as though sensing her distress. He glanced back at her over his shoulder. “There are many ways to be useful,” he mused, almost to himself, then resumed his work.  
Belle was sure her mouth gaped in wonder again, but she didn’t feel the need to check herself for once in the company of her master, nor did his words cause any unease. Long moments past. Belle carefully moved to the shelf when it became apparent he was intent upon his work, and, grabbing the first book to catch her hurried eye, she scampered over to the low settee by the window. Settling herself in quite comfortably, she opened it to the first page after one more long, lingering glance at the wizard at work.  
The windows shone and sparkled like crystal goblets of pure light.

*****

The wizard threw the door open with an almighty bang, but Belle was too exhausted to jump in alarm. He was scorched, lightly roasted around the edges of his fine clothing, a piece of lace collar still steaming slightly. He strode forward, barely contained rage.  
Belle was mud all over. While he was a creature of fire and ash, she was earth and water. A weariness down to her bone pervaded her, and she couldn’t be bothered to rouse herself from the chair she’d collapsed into, even to stop her dripping on the wooden boards of her room.  
“Don’t fuss,” she said quietly.  
He scoffed. “Fuss?! Me?” He was gesturing toward her, with both hands a-quiver. His words had failed him again.  
Funny, she thought. Words never failed him with other people.  
The months and months she’d been here, nearly a year now, she’d seen the Imp interact with quite a few more people than she expected. She’d supposed because her own village shied away from ever approaching the master of the valley unless in direst need, that most of the rest of the villages were the same. This wasn’t so. He was frequently bothered; both by locals, and even people from far away. Near the seat of the rulers of the kingdom, wizards were thick on the ground, but useful wizards--that was another matter. Her wizard was by far one of the best in the realm, if not the world. So people great and not so great alike were willing to journey to his “backward country hovel” (as Belle has heard one witch despair of it as she trudged up the stairs clad in glittering black satin and red velvets. The Imp had just laughed at her in mocking delight, so Belle didn’t take too much offense on his behalf. She took some on her own.)  
Friends, foes, alliances, annoyances--the Imp had a great deal of them all it seemed to Belle, and they sought him in his Forest keep and more often than not he talked circles around their heads and sent them on their way. Sometimes they got the magic they were looking for. Sometimes they got a lecture and a leg cramp from the stairs. He was a master of words, his voice often low and even or lilting and mocking. Belle heard more often the tones of exasperation, genuine amusement, and dismay he was capable of conveying.  
She wasn’t sure what his tone was now, but she didn’t particularly care. The last few weeks there had been a growing tension between them that made Belle exasperated in her own right. She’d become the wizard’s apprentice, of all things. Shortly after she began to devour the books in his library, he’d begun showing her how to cast spells and brew potions as a matter of course. At first, Belle was taken aback; who was she to do magic? But once begun, she could hardly remember a time before it. It just came so naturally to her, as naturally as a walk in the Forest or a smile for a friend. She assumed the wizard must have seen the potential in her and decided to make it useful for himself as a second set of hands in his workroom.  
But the newfound camaraderie had slipped away almost as quickly as it had begun when Belle began to push. She started in small ways, asking “why” and “what for” more times than even she could count, and finally starting to question the very way he managed life in their valley. Why sit up in a cold tower and be feared, when he had the power to sweep change across their lands and help battle the darkness of the Forest directly? Why be the most powerful wizard in the all the realms, and still hide away?  
At first she’d gotten pursed lips and terse commands to leave things alone. Other time, he would simply vanish from the workroom or the kitchen or wherever they happen to be, as though he were too vexed to even look at her. Never, Belle noted, did he do anything that could be interpreted as harmful to herself, not even so much as a shout.  
She thought he would shout now, if his hands weren’t already speaking volumes. A wry smile tugged at the edges of Belle’s mouth: she finally sees the man in a proper rage, and all she can think is how adorable.  
The thought is torn from her with a gasp as he suddenly lunges into her personal space, those expressive hands hovering over her seated form starting to glow purple. He sweeps them around her, a stream of frustrated speech finally breaking free.  
“Let’s see if you’ve managed to get any Curse on you. Foolish, stubborn girl, chasing after beasts with a handful of herbs and good intentions--”  
“It was herbs, fairy dust, two incantations, and good intentions,” Belle broke in. She shifted under his magical examination, managing to put hands to hips even in her winged back chair. “And I do not have any Curse contamination on me, I was quite prepared.”  
“Prepared,” he said with disbelief. “No one is ‘prepared’ for the Forest, dearie, it eats grown magicians alive, let alone little village girls who’ve read some books.”  
“I haven’t just read the books,” she shot back. “I’ve been with you, haven’t I?”  
He fell silent at that, his now quiescent hands coming to rest before him. He inclined his head at her, his wild hair falling to obscure his face slightly.  
“You could have easily been killed. Or Cursed.” His voice was low, not with anger. Belle stared at his bent head, rising to her feet when he made no movement for long moments. Carefully, like she’d approached the creature of the Forest she’d just freed from Cursed form and turned back into a questing prince, she approached her wizard.  
Cupping his face gently in her right hand, she met startled eyes of liquid intensity as he jerked slightly at her touch.  
“I would not leave you like that, my Imp,” she said softly. She’d meant to say it like a small jest, one of the teasing comments they batted back and forth between them while they worked. But with her hand about the warm roughness of his cheek, the scent of him rising through the smell of smoke, and his eyes on her like a man lost, she found nothing funny in the words. Only truth.  
His mouth moved soundlessly a moment. “Rumplestiltskin,” he said at last. Belle’s brows quirked in confusion. “My name,” he explained. “It’s Rumplestiltskin.”  
Belle whispered the word in the space between them, dropping her hand to his shoulder. He gave her a smile, something warm and soft that caused her stomach to twist, and made to move away.  
Without giving the matter anymore thought, Belle reached back up, this time with both hands, and grabbing at his hair almost violently, pushed her mouth up to his for a kiss.  
She could almost taste how startled he was. And yet, for all that, she felt hands grasping back at her, fluttering about her shoulders and down to her waist. Those expressive hands she’d followed so often with her eyes followed her form like a finger upon a map, gliding and intent. The heat of him rose in her, and she felt a flush spread from her head to her toes.  
Rumplestiltskin wrenched himself away after a dizzying moment.  
“That is-that is not a good idea,” he said, breath coming in gasps.  
“Why not?” Belle wondered with curiosity. Glancing down at herself, she took in the mud spatter and damp rags that her outfit now consisted of. “It might be better without these clothes on,” she conceded.  
He looked thunderstruck. She took him carefully but firmly by the hand and began to lead him toward her bed. It occurred to her just then that it was the first time the wizard had entered her room, and she didn’t mind in the slightest. She made to remove his singed jacket and he caught her hands in his.  
“What are you doing?” An echo of an old question, but the bafflement was pure and genuine.  
Shrugging, Belle made do with beginning to remove the sodden scraps of her own clothes. “We fought a Yaoguai,” she reminded him with a smirk. “In a cursed Forest, by a river with very slippery banks,” she punctuated that statement with the ‘plop’ of a dropped over-dress. “And it was on fire. The whole time. We’re messes.”  
She was down to just her shift and stockings, and went back to work on removing some his many layers of glittering armor, somehow dulled in the light of her bedchamber to a less intimidating level of sparkling. He was more real here, gaping at her like a fish, clothing thumping all about him. He was left in a loose shirt, gold in color with a wide open collar showing the smoothness of his chest, and his leather trousers. Belle made to attack the ties at the front of said trousers when he stopped her hands yet again.  
“You can’t want this,” he said in his statement voice, and Belle laughed to realize that he must have been bluffing so many times when he said things like they were truth because he was so very wrong about that. She sobered in an instant.  
“Do you not want it?”She tried to draw back her hands, but he followed them with his whole body and he was kissing her again, quickly, drawing back and placing fleeting ones upon her cheeks and her eyelids as they fluttered shut. Their hands were clasped between them, and he came to rest with his forehead against her own.  
He was hers utterly. The most powerful of wizards, and she knew she held his heart in her hands like a small glowing ember. He would let me go, if I wanted she realized, as his head lolled to one side and he buried his nose into the scent of her hair. Their hands drifted apart, only to mirror each other in sweeping up around each other’s backs in a tight embrace.  
“You may go, if you wish, my lady,” his voice was barely there in her ear, the hands holding her so tightly ready to set her free in an instant, if that was what she decided.  
“I wish to decide my own fate,” she told whispered back like a secret, and blindly, she sought his mouth with hers again.  
They managed to get into the bed and out of their clothing at some point in that kiss or maybe the next one, or the next dozen. Magic--his or hers it didn’t really matter-might have come into play. He was hands, warm strong hands everywhere, and rather than feel like she was held down Belle felt lifted, out of her own form and into a new one. She in turn could not look enough, could not taste enough, a fact which made the man next to her groan with a rumbling depth that she felt in her stomach. They faced each other side-by-side while their legs moved restlessly like swimmers, constantly entwining and rubbing against the other, dance partners sharing the lead.  
All she could feel was heat, liquid warmth running through her, reaching out and grasping for him, for more. When he finally slid into her, there was a moment of absolute stillness in the midst of all their frenzied movement as his forehead came to rest against hers as they shared the same gasp of wonderment. Belle bottled that moment up in her mind, a glowing potion to keep for the rest of her life. The moment snapped and they were both in motion again, panting breaths and sliding limbs. Belle felt shudders snatch her up and shake her loose like trees in a storm, the lightning crackle of electricity down her fingers and the ends of her hair.  
Rumplestiltskin was below her as she rode out the storm, then rolled her beneath him as he began to be moved by waves of his own. She was crying out faintly which each thrust of his body in hers, a wordless song or incantation she’d not learned from books that he was echoing with low groaning pants, weaving the spell with her. The world came undone again, their movements slowing in the aftermath, the storm blowing itself out and leaving a peace behind it.  
Entwined on Belle’s bed they slept in cool darkness.  
Sometime in the night, they spoke.  
He told her about his endless years fighting the Cursed Forest, how little anyone outside their valley realized it’s destructive potential. But he’d seen it, watched it rip away a beloved son from him, so he’d dedicated the rest of his long wizard life to ending it for good. Belle told him about her own dealings with the Forest, a place she knew held terrors but also held wonders, if you were patient and clever enough to find them. He seemed concerned and amused by her assessment in equal parts, but he listened to her intently and cast no aspersions on her opinions which Belle found refreshing and somewhat thrilling. Her wizard was a man of great intensity, and she thrilled to learn more and more about him.  
He looked at her, utterly bewitched by the movement of her finger in swirling patterns across his chest, and she finally had the courage to address one of her most burning questions.  
“Why do you take them? Us?” She spoke in hesitance still, wondering if she might be pushing the quiet comfort of the moment to a place of breaking.  
He is quiet. His eyes are hooded for a moment, but the shutters fly off them when he breathes out a sigh.  
“I need them.” His voice is quiet, but deep. “I-those of us with magic in our blood live a long time, and in that time, it’s quite easy to become less . . . human.” He shifts uncomfortably. “I’ve seen it happen. I needed to keep ahold of myself, to have some kind of connection to this valley, to the people. Otherwise, it would be all too easy to stop caring completely.”  
Belle mulled this over in her mind. She couldn’t quite catch the edges of his logic.  
“But why not simply live with us, down in the valley?” She asked. “Why snatch-up a girl to an unknown fate of infamy that leaves her unable to ever return home?”  
“What?” Rumplestilskin sounded astonished, and Belle was about to object to his dismissal of their lives in the villages. “What infamy? Admittedly, it does appear a lot of the women don’t return to the valley, but would you? With the sort of repayment they leave with, I imagine they’re eager to see a wider world.”  
Belle pushes herself up to see his face, one hand braced upon his chest. She can’t make out much of his face in the darkness, a fire providing flickering light, the tower having provided the fire. She has an impression of wide eyes and confusion. She must have a similar look of astonishment on her own.  
“You always take a young woman, unwed, and usually uncommonly pretty! What do you imagine most people think you want her for?”  
There is a beat of silence.  
“Is that what you all think?” His voice is flat, perhaps even stricken Belle thinks. She regrets some of the haste of her words.  
“Well, yes, more or less,” she tries to convey her own knowledge of the wrongness of the assumption.  
“Is that what you thought as well?”  
“Yes.”  
He shifts, uncomfortably. “And you still chose to come with me?”  
“I didn’t choose!” Belle exclaimed, surprised at the implication.  
She thinks the look on his face may now be more wry. “You did indeed, mistress. Loud and clear, you made your intent known.”  
“But, you doing the Choosing, that’s the whole point!”  
“Not this time, I didn’t,” he freed his hands from beneath the bedding and held them up in his defense. Belle had gotten rather exuberant with her own gesturing against his bare chest and could not blame him.  
“I often Choose those who have power,” he continued. “It is better to train that sort of thing than leave it unchecked. Sometimes that works in my favor, sometimes not.” The twist of a sour memory. “Both you and your . . . friend, had potential, but you demanded I leave her be, so it was you instead.”  
Belle gaped at him in shock. “You can read minds?” She whispered at last.  
He laughed. A full laugh, from the belly up that Belle could feel as well as hear. “No, that is beyond my powers. But one would not need to read minds with such a great shout of will as you can give, my lady.”  
Her arms growing abruptly fatigued beneath her, Belle fell back onto the bed, partially on top of the bemused wizard. She frowned to herself in concentration as she thought it through.  
So why . . .  
A dozen questions occurred to her at once. “The books?” She asked, and felt a shrug.  
“Of course. I thought to . . . reinforce your power by complying with your will, as it suited your studies.”  
“So not anyone could learn as I have learned, simply from study and your teaching?”  
He snorted. “No, indeed not. Some have not learned even with that. Did you think you came out of a book?” There’s a hint of his old mocking tone back from where she’d chased it into hiding. She took another moment to ponder.  
“And . . . this?” She was hesitant, not sure what answer she sought. There was a lengthy pause.  
“This was an old wizard realizing when he was beat,” he said softly, running a hand through her wild tangle of curls, smoothing down her back with care. “You are unique in many ways, Belle, in this as well.”  
She tilted her head up against his shoulder to meet his eyes. They were fathomless black pits in the dark bedroom, but she felt the glimmer that was intrinsically him still resting there. She felt a smile break across her face and he rolled his lovely eyes at her.  
“And now, mistress, you’ve been granted three wishes, whatever shall you do with your power?” He tried to make it an idle question. He failed.  
Belle pressed a kiss to the bit of shoulder within her reach, then burrowed into his side like a mouse preparing for winter. The valley was her home, the Forest--for all its danger--where she roamed, and this Tower was a fine den indeed. Her wizard an interesting and worthy companion as well.  
“I imagine I’ll keep on much the same as I am,” she stated. “With, perhaps, more muddy adventures.”  
Belle thinks the sigh was meant to be resigned sounding, but she hears the tremble of relief it holds as well.  
“I suppose that will work. We might need a new maid.” It was Belle’s turn to laugh.  
“We’ll need no such thing,” she said with finality. She could feel the drugging pull of deserved sleep around the edges of her mind. One last question found her tongue.  
“Why do you never choose men?” She asked.  
A snort. “Because they’re utterly useless,” the wizard said. Belle could not think of an immediate argument to such a statement, and slipped into sleep after long moments of not really trying to do so.  
Rumplestiltskin ran a tender hand down her hair a few more times, contemplating the small sorceress in his arms, and then followed her into sleep.


End file.
